Does Fascism Arise From the Working Class?

Where do ideas come from? They come from the practice and experience of human beings and those human beings are part of history, part of and the result of that historical experience and practice. Our ideas about how to rule ourselves come from our practice at that endeavor.

There can be a long term influence of the ideas that emerged even thousands of years ago. Take religious texts and commentary for example. In some ways there has been a lot of continuity but there has also been perhaps more discontinuity.

Look at Leviticus for example. While the average person can find a handful of wonderful ideas they can understand, support and live their lives by in that holy booklet of the Bible the rest of the book, more than ninety percent, I imagine is, incomprehensible and archaic, basically useless.

So we may want to believe there has been this great continuity in thinking, but look at all the sacrifices in Leviticus. Most of the book is about how to sacrifice a pigeon, or a bull ox or just about anything kosher. People just don't do sacrifices anymore. There is tremendous discontinuity there. What were they sacrificing? Animals mainly and also some flour. See what I mean.

Sacrificing a goat doesn't make any sense to the modern mind. Still we may want to believe that we are somehow part of that ancient tradition in Leviticus. In some ways we, maybe are but in most ways we are definitively not. The world has changed and even our ideas about Leviticus are unlikely to have much to do with the ideas of the men who wrote the book. We are just kidding ourselves to think otherwise.

Leviticus looks to me like the plan of the priestly caste to run the rambunctious tribes of Israel. It also made the sons of Aaron and their descendants special keepers of the temple and all the religious priestly activity. It is the ideology of a priestly caste.

There was this crisis about how to run the descendants of the great Mosaic Liberation. Forty years in the desert was one thing and then they ended up with Jerusalem and some set ways and the priesthood was a crucial if not the crucial leadership group.

Today the book of Leviticus reads like a foreign tongue because we live and make a living in a very different way than the largely pastoral people of the Pentatuch. The practice of people is different today than way back in the day and the ideas are significantly different as well.

Do workers ever think in the same way as the writers of Leviticus? Do they think about how the world could be run differently, for the workers just the way the writers of Leviticus thought about how a new priesthood and caste could lead and perhaps rule the other Jews? I think they do and that the history of revolution in the last century has suggested that the ideas of the workers and toiling masses are ultimately going to rule the day and the world.

If working class ideas come from anywhere it seems that they would come from the workers, their experience and their practice. This is one level and any idea that any worker has could be considered a working class idea. More politically the political culture of the working class is the focus here. So what are working class ideas about politics. This is the working class ideology or ideas as we find them like a pollster or a sociologist or anthropologist.

I think that the unity of capital and state as one definition of fascism. I am discussing fascism in another sense. Here I am discussing here the idea generate the ideology that a great working class hero can create an omnipotent state that devours the inferior beings of the earth and rewards those according to their caste and service to the state. This ideology is of course wrapped up with the most evil and convoluted manipulations and terrorizing of the population, including the workers themselves. I think that obedience to the state is supposed to help the group of workers that is the basis for this or that fascist trend.

Then there are those folks who are educated. They may be clergy or attorneys or anyone with some education. Sometimes they are professors but other people who are only marginally working class or not working class at all come up with ideas about the working class, what its objective interests are so to speak. Often they come from the working class but we all know that it is publish or perish. Anyway, people from any class can possibly come up with ideas that are part of some working class ideology.
Of course business tends to be hostile to even the most modest of working class ideology and power. Witness the tremendous efforts to stymie and destroy trade unions throughout United States history. Trade unionism is the practical struggle for a living wage and life style. Yet even that basic appeal to humanity and justice is met mainly with hostility and what amounts to a class war against union organizing by the owners of businesses.

Fascism does seem to be an ideology that arises from both of these groups and while it may ultimately serve big business it may also pose a threat to big business, threatening to engulf it with an omnipotent state.

Of course the unity of big business and big government is nothing new here in the United States. Today even the banking system seems to be threatened with a crisis that may mean something like nationalization.
Big business socialism is the rage and the rest of us will have to start begging and fighting for justice whenever we get motivated enough to stop accepting rule by a big government and big business that is more interested in international operations than the United States and those of us living here.

Trade unionism and other forms of working class cooperation with capital is a lot like asking for a raise but it is done collectively and without a "white collar". Working with capital type ideas prevail in the working class of the United States today. It is almost inconceivable that we work or do anything without collaboration with capital. We have a rather poor sense of working class identity here in the United States and
I suppose we are all part of that confusion.

Other forms of working class ideology and unionism exist and they may trend towards anarchism or anarchosyndicalism on the one had or towards communism or socialism for the workers on the other hand. Since anarchists and communists want to abolish capitalist rule and capitalism that aspect of their ideas is usually more obvious than the union of workers aspect.

Anarchists, communists and fascists all seem to end up at each others throats if they seize or are on the verge of seizing social, political, military and economic power. This division among workers can hardly do anything but defend and strengthen bourgeoisie rule.

Fascism usually seems to direct the workers to support new or old big business and big government oppressors or even monarchs, the more backward parts of society or allies of convenience. Fascism ranges from a false revolutionary movement to the destruction of the revolutionary working class movements, thugery, race hatred, brutal patriarchy and genocide elevated to a state religion.